The present invention relates to the process of collecting selected gases from the soil, the outdoor environment and an indoor environment. The method is used to collect that certain class of reduced gases which may be present in low concentrations and difficult to collect for analysis by existing means.
The determination of the presence of reduced gases has applications in mineral, geothermal and petroleum exploration, as well as in several environmental fields. These gases, which are produced by a variety of natural processes in the subsurface, in water or in sediments beneath water bodies, migrate toward the surface of the earth or into the atmosphere, where they can be collected. The presence of anomalous concentrations of these gases in the soil gas, adsorbed on soil particles, or in the atmosphere above the earth's surface can be indicative of deposits of economic interest in the subsurface or of certain types of man-made contamination which may have produced such gases.